Let The Sparring Begin

Partisanship Flares As Impeachment Experts Testify

WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee members squabbled among themselves and with 19 experts Monday as they tried to determine if President Clinton deserves to be impeached.

A long day of testimony and insults appeared to have changed no minds even as Washington is awash in talk that Clinton may escape with a congressional slap on the wrist for his affair with Monica Lewinsky and his alleged attempts to cover it up.

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is scheduled to appear before committee members next week to defend his contention that Clinton is guilty of perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

Republicans showed no outward sign Monday of backing away from their pre-Election Day stance that impeachment efforts should proceed. But with the election boosting their numbers in the House next year, Democrats were adamant that it is time to end the process.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., predicted that committee Republicans will push ahead with a vote on articles of impeachment.

``Based on what I saw this morning, I would say it's quite likely,'' Nadler said.

Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., chairman of the judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, opened the hearing on the history of impeachment with a tough blast at Clinton.

``He must be called to account for putting his selfish personal interest ahead of his oath of office and his constitutional duty,'' Canady said.

But the senior committee Democrat was equally blunt.

``We must stop at the earliest moment this terrible carnival,'' said Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan. He said the government has no business investigating a president's sex life.

The witness list was as partisan as the hearing. Ten were listed as Republican witnesses, eight as Democratic and one as shared by both sides.

Before the hearing began, the committee's public relations staff sent out faxes of the arguments of Republican witnesses. Asked why the staff publicized only one side of the testimony, Sam Stratman, spokesman for the Republican- dominated committee, said the Democrats can represent their side of things. ``As vicious as they've been, they can do it themselves,'' he said.

During the hearing, Democrats retaliated by distributing an analysis that said seven of the 10 Republican witnesses have ties to Starr or Paula Jones, who has a sexual harassment case pending against Clinton.

At one point, Rep. Bob Inglis, R- S.C., said Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the noted historian and a Democratic witness, showed ``very little common sense'' in arguing against impeachment.

Inglis' comment came after he refused to allow Schlesinger to answer a question and Schlesinger said Inglis kept repeating himself.

In another pointed exchange, Conyers objected after Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the full Judiciary Committee, tried to inject a bit of levity into the hearing.

``I want the record to show my deep dismay with the tone of this discussion,'' Conyers said to a stone-faced Hyde.

The hearing witnesses were almost all academics. Republican witnesses such as University of London Professor Gary L. McDowell said the Founding Fathers would have considered obstructing justice and perjury as constituting ``high crimes and misdemeanors,'' the constitutional requirement for impeachment.

But Cass R. Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor, said the drafters of the Constitution gave the House the right to impeach only for treason, bribery or ``other high crimes and misdemeanors,'' a definition they deliberately left vague.

``The word `other' suggests we need acts of the same magnitude and the same nature as treason or bribery,'' Sunstein said. ``This case is not close to the line.''

Schlesinger, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, argued that the charges against Clinton do not represent grave breaches of the president's official duties. Rather, they are instances of private misbehavior, Schlesinger said, that at best amount to ``low crimes and misdemeanors.''

Hyde disagreed, saying that Clinton, like every president before him, took an oath to see that the laws of the land are faithfully executed.

``God, I'd like to forget all of this,'' Hyde said, ``I mean, who needs it? [But] I really believe that notion that no man is above the law.''

Another committee witness was Robert F. Drinan, a Catholic priest and Georgetown University law professor who was a Judiciary Committee member when the panel voted impeachment charges against former President Nixon.

Drinan said there is no constitutional procedure for a censure of the kind being discussed. The introduction of such procedure could weaken the independence of the presidency and pose a danger to the constitutional principle of separation of powers, Drinan warned.

But at the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhardt seemed to signal renewed interest in a negotiated settlement that might include censure. Speaking of the recent Republican leadership shake-up, Lockhart said, ``It could create a better environment for finishing something that the country so much wants to get behind it.''